Read Me

ABOUT SURBLHOST

Surblhost is a small commandline program that looks up hostnames
in the Spam URI Realtime Blocklist (SURBL).  If a hostname is
blacklisted, then it means that it has been reported that spam email
contains web links to this hostname.

Many spam filtering programs use the SURBL to aid in the filtering
process, but this program can serve many other needs.  For instance,
it is being actively used to deny URL redirection to blacklisted hosts
on sites like http://memurl.com

This program is useful because:

- It's easy to use, quick and portable (written in C).
- It comes with a predefined whitelist, which you can add to or change
  at runtime.
- It recognizes two-level top-level-domains (TLDs) such as co.uk, and
  will therefore correctly look up hostnames like foo.co.uk
- It automatically strips off subdomains for correct lookups, which is
  very handy in automated environments.
- It can read hostnames from the commandline or standard input.
- It can operate in quiet mode, indicating lookup results by the shell
  return value.
- You'll sleep better at night knowing your systems use surblhost to
  help fight spam. :)

I'd be very glad to hear from what you are using surblhost for.
Drop me a line to the email address given below.


BUILDING

./configure
make
make check    # optional
make install


COMPILATION PROBLEMS

I've encountered some strange problems when using the GNU
C compiler on FreeBSD 4.xx, with gcc --version giving 2.95.4.
If that is the case, then you could always try using g++ instead:

CC=g++ ./configure --prefix=$HOME
make
make check
make install


MISSING LIBRESOLV

If you have problems finding libresolv on your system, you can compile
without DNS TXT lookups:

./configure --disable-resolv
make
make check
make install


SOURCE CODE SUBVERSION REPOSITORY

You can check out the bleeding edge source code with svn:

$ svn co https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/surblhost

You have to run the following to generate the configure script:

$ autoreconf -v -i


PATCHES AND BUGREPORTS

Please send any patches, suggestions or bugreports to:
Christian Stigen Larsen <csl@sublevel3.org>


COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Surblhost is Copyright (C) 2006, 2007 Christian Stigen Larsen
Surblhost is distributed under the GNU General Public License v2.


LINKS

- The official homepage is on http://surblhost.sourceforge.net
- The author's homepage is on http://csl.sublevel3.org
- You can read more about SURBL at http://www.surbl.org


$Id$